Active or Semi-Passive fans?

[Locklin]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions on whether I should have my card be semi-passively or actively cooled. I read that active fans will cause more dust build-up on the heat sink but semi-passive idles around 10 degrees hotter at 45 celcius and will also cause the fans to turn on and off regularly. Any help would be appreciated as I've already sent this card back for cleaning/new thermal paste as the temps got really bad. I have good airflow and eveything just wondering which method is safer.

 

Its a Gigabyte 2080ti Gaming OC and its an open style card - Thank you for any help in advance.

[Moonzy]

2 minutes ago, Locklin said:

semi-passive idles around 10 degrees hotter at 45 celcius and will also cause the fans to turn on and off regularly.

depends on things, i have a thread in my signature discussing it

tl;dr, some refresh rate cause gpu to idle at higher power state, causing it to heat up more than it should and the fans will occasinally spin up

if it's at the lower idle power state, it'll idle without fan ever needing to spin (verified this myself), assuming your case airflow isnt bad

 

i recommend leaving it to do whatever it wants, semi-passive is fine, idling at 50c is fine, load temps are what matters.

[VeganJoy]

if you mean like a 0db fan stop mode, yeah those are a great idea to set up. with my old 1080ti ftw3 it idled at <35C passive, 40-45C in normal 2d usage, and i think i had fans come on around 50-55C. unless you have absolutely terrible airflow in your case it should dissipate plenty of heat passively to not spin up the fans randomly when youre just doing 2d stuff. 

[Locklin]

12 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

depends on things, i have a thread in my signature discussing it

tl;dr, some refresh rate cause gpu to idle at higher power state, causing it to heat up more than it should and the fans will occasinally spin up

if it's at the lower idle power state, it'll idle without fan ever needing to spin (verified this myself), assuming your case airflow isnt bad

 

i recommend leaving it to do whatever it wants, semi-passive is fine, idling at 50c is fine, load temps are what matters.

The cards standard setup is semi-passive but It idles around 45-50 and starts to spin up at 50 now and again. Active just idles around 35. Load temps are about the same on either mode. I'm just worried that the stop/start is bad for the gpu. I have a full mesh case with 3 intake and 2 exhaust so i dont think airflow is an issue.

[Moonzy]

1 minute ago, Locklin said:

The cards standard setup is semi-passive but It idles around 45-50 and starts to spin up at 50 now and again. Active just idles around 35. Load temps are about the same on either mode. I'm just worried that the stop/start is bad for the gpu. I have a full mesh case with 3 intake and 2 exhaust so i dont think airflow is an issue.

either is fine

if the spin up is bothering you, then make it active

if it doesn't leave it semi-passive

 

constantly turning is more wearing on the bearing than start and stopping

[Locklin]

9 minutes ago, VeganJoy said:

if you mean like a 0db fan stop mode, yeah those are a great idea to set up. with my old 1080ti ftw3 it idled at <35C passive, 40-45C in normal 2d usage, and i think i had fans come on around 50-55C. unless you have absolutely terrible airflow in your case it should dissipate plenty of heat passively to not spin up the fans randomly when youre just doing 2d stuff. 

I do have decent airflow but semi-passive causes its to stop start when playing easy to-run games and even sometimes when just idle, it idles at about 45-47 degrees and once it hits 50 the fans come on so there is a lot of stop/start

[Locklin]

Just now, Moonzy said:

either is fine

if the spin up is bothering you, then make it active

if it doesn't leave it semi-passive

 

constantly turning is more wearing on the bearing than start and stopping

Thanks for your help I appreciate it,

looking at msi afterburner and seeing it idle at 45 celcius on semi-passive rather than <35 celcius with active just bothers me alot cause i was always under the impression that cooler was better, but im guessing this temperature difference wont damage my card over time?

[Moonzy]

2 minutes ago, Locklin said:

im guessing this temperature difference wont damage my card over time?

technically it's more damaging to the chip to run hotter

 

but when it's under load, the wear is significantly higher

idling at 45c doesnt even compare to that.

 

so don't worry about it.